


Feeling Is First

by Brigdh



Category: Swordspoint - Kushner
Genre: Blindness, Established Relationship, M/M, Relationship Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 09:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigdh/pseuds/Brigdh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard was going blind and all they did was fight, in the same frustrating, tiresome ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feeling Is First

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Spring Kinkfest 2007. The prompt was, "Alec/Richard: Fur on skin - 'You are the dawn that arrives in the middle of the night'". Spoilers for The Privilege of the Sword.

"Close your eyes."

"What difference does it-"

"Be quiet," Alec snapped. "And close your eyes."

Richard glimpsed movement near his face, and shut his eyes before Alec could cover them with a hand, or poke one, or do whatever else he had in mind. Thus deprived of their purpose, Alec's fingers fell to the side of his face, tracing his cheek, Alec's thumb skimming the underside of his lower lip. Richard sighed resignedly. "I don't understand why you're doing this."

"I do it because I want to. Obviously." Alec shifted from the edge of the bed to sit across Richard's hips, his weight enough to press Richard more firmly into the mattress. He ran his hands down Richard's jaw and neck, curved them around his shoulders, and stroked down his sides to his waist; on the way back up, he paused to loosen Richard's shirt, exposing his skin. The air was warm. Alec could afford to keep as many rooms as he chose heated to summer temperatures; Tremontaine House probably had an entire forest maintained just to release the current Duke from any need to acknowledge winter. "Do you find it so difficult to bear?" Alec said, his mouth near Richard's ear as he leaned forward to slip the shirt out from under Richard's back.

"Of course not."

"Ah. Clearly I was confused by how you've been avoiding me. You do not even look at me, anymore."

Richard opened his eyes, but it didn't matter; the only things he could make out were trinkets and fashionable furniture, scattered around the edges of the room. "To see what?"

"You can't poke enough holes in the wall to bring back your sight, Richard," Alec snarled back. "No matter how many hours you might spend practicing."

Richard said nothing, though his jaw tightened; he thought that Alec might hit him and braced himself. Alec moved, and it was jerky and abrupt, but the violence wasn't directed at Richard; he pulled something off the floor and said in a voice still stiff with anger, "Close your eyes." Richard did; he was sick of arguing, and particularly sick of this argument, which was so persistent that it seemed to be the only thing he and Alec had said to one another for months. Richard was going blind and all they did was fight, in the same frustrating, tiresome ways.

When it first brushed his chest, Richard assumed it was the ends of Alec's hair, perhaps fallen over his shoulder when he had leaned forward. The texture was wrong though, too soft, and with a substantiality that long hair wouldn't have. Whatever it was, it stroked from shoulder to shoulder high across his collarbones, and then down the center of his chest; it was cool and silky, but quickly warmed to the heat of his skin, and the trail it made across him felt overly sensitive, heightened to touch. Richard was tempted to look, but instead he reached for it, capturing the edge of a fur collar and a few of Alec's fingers.

"That's cheating," Alec murmured. Richard let go, and Alec swept the fur across him again, moving in patterns that seemed to have no order. It almost tickled, but the sensation was just short of that; instead his skin prickled like it did in winter when he came out of the cold and stood too close to the fire, or when a fight lasted for so long that when he finally lowered his sword the blood trickled in pins and needles back to his hand. Alec neither stopped nor hurried, but the fur was so soft, too soft, and as it wakened his nerves they nearly ached for a different, stronger touch.

Alec lowered himself to lie more wholly against Richard, and then his hair did fall against Richard's arm; it was coarser than the fur, obvious when they both drifted against his skin. Alec himself was mostly hard, angled bones and lean flesh, as he arranged himself against Richard's side. His mouth was wet and very warm when it came to Richard's arched neck, kissing hungrily. Richard felt Alec's teeth scrape, then fasten lightly over his neck; the bite seemed to shoot straight past the delicate brush of the fur and go further down. Richard lifted his hips against Alec's, and when that wasn't enough curved his arm around Alec's back to crush them tighter together. Alec laughed and slipped up to bring their mouths together; the fur drifted down Richard's stomach and Alec hooked two fingers into the waistband of Richard's breeches. Richard would almost be able to think enough to do something more than mindlessly respond to Alec's kiss, if only it wasn't for the fur there, distractingly light and downy against the thin skin below his navel. He could even smell it, a rich scent that was not quite the same as leather.

Alec jostled Richard, awkwardly struggling to remove his own shirt without breaking the kiss. Richard didn't help him; as soon as he could, he had both hands on Alec's back, and he was far more interested in the ways Alec's muscles shifted than any clothing. A shoulder-bone flicked sharp against his fingertips as Alec shrugged out of a sleeve, and Richard reached up to the short, feathery hairs at the nape of his neck, and then down and around to the crease inside his hip, mapping by touch places he had seen. Alec tasted like wine; he'd drunk too much at dinner, and Richard had had hardly any. The fur dropped, forgotten, and Alec scraped his bare hands down Richard's chest, so that Richard curved up into his grasp.

"You're so stubborn. So proud," Alec said, his breath warm against Richard's cheek. "Richard, I still-"

Alec silenced himself with kisses pressed to Richard's skin, and turned his head, so that their faces rubbed together; he needed to shave. Richard tipped his head back, his mouth opening for more air and his eyes still tightly shut.


End file.
